From Tepco stopped releasing plant parameters in English, posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 13th, 2012 "Tepco releases plant parameters data twice a day. It is one of the most important source to know the latest state of the nuclear plants. However, Tepco quit releasing the English version on 5/12/2012."

Tokyo bay becoming a hot spot, Posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com on May 9th, 2012

Minamisoma is 122 times more contaminated than mandatory evacuation zone in Belarus, fukushima-diary.com, posted by Mochizuki on May 10th, 2012

The highest atmospheric dose is in Tochigi (Apart from Fukushima), posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 12th, 2012

From Japanese bleeding from eyes posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 12th, 2012

Japan

2012-05-06 Does radiation travel across the sea ? Posted by Mochizuki, /fukushima-diary.com, on May 6th, 2012
Tracking Japan’s Tsunami Debris
Using historical weather patterns, NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory developed this model of how debris will circulate across the Pacific Ocean.
Although a year has passed since Japan’s tsunami sucked tons of wood, nets and other debris into the Pacific Ocean, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continues to track the rubble and urges others to do so to help focus cleanup efforts.
The total amount of debris is unknown — the Japanese government is fine-tuning its estimate of the amount that was generated and sank initially, said Ruth Yender, NOAA’s Japan tsunami marine debris coordinator. And immediately after the event, satellite imagery showed large swaths of floating junk, which dispersed a few months later.
So NOAA is using other means, including higher resolution satellite imagery and the public’s participation, to collect information for planning and cleanup purposes.
NOAA developed a model (above) and a map (below) to track where debris likely will circulate in the Pacific Ocean. It launched a marine debris tracker app, which people can use to log rubble they find along coastlines and in waterways. They also can email the agency with their finds.
Does radiation travels across the sea?
Click on map for a larger version. Courtesy of J. Churnside/NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
It doesn’t matter if the trash is from the tsunami or other sources. “Debris is not a new thing. It washes ashore everyday, and it can be a hazard to marine life,” Yender said. Whales, sea lions and other creatures can ingest it or become entangled, and it also can do damage to coral reefs and boat propellers, she said.
So by gauging any changes in volume and composition, NOAA and other state, local and federal agencies can know where to ramp up their cleanup efforts.
Since nuclear reactors, including those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, were damaged in the earthquake, there was a concern of radioactive contamination. But agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency have examined tests of nearby damaged vessels and other tsunami remnants, and determined it was “very highly unlikely” the spreading debris would be radioactive, Yender said.
<End>
[Note] Tsunami hit before nuclear accidents, so Tsunami debris is actually unlikely to be contaminated. However, the map suggests how contaminated water travels around in Pacific ocean.
Source
2012-05-06 33mSv/y measured at over 26 schools in Fukushima and it’s concealed, Posted by Mochizuki on May 6th, 2012 · 4 Comments
Following up this article..Koriyama board of education stops decontamination of schools
Over 14 elementary schools, 7 junior high schools and 5 nursery schools in Koriyama city of Fukushima measured higher than 3.8µSv/h (33mSv/y) in January, which is beyond the yearly safety limit of 20mSv/y. This measurement was ordered by the board of education in Koriyama city but they concealed this fact until a citizen’s organization requested for information disclosure, announced on 5/6/2012.
According to the disclosed information, Koriyama city board of education ordered each school to measure radiation at 8 points in street gutter, hedge and drain of rain water back in January.
In the radiation measurement of April, 20.4µSv/h was measured from a street gutter of a junior high school.
Source
Following up this article..Koriyama board of education stops decontamination of schools
Over 14 elementary schools, 7 junior high schools and 5 nursery schools in Koriyama city of Fukushima measured higher than 3.8µSv/h (33mSv/y) in January, which is beyond the yearly safety limit of 20mSv/y. This measurement was ordered by the board of education in Koriyama city but they concealed this fact until a citizen’s organization requested for information disclosure, announced on 5/6/2012.
According to the disclosed information, Koriyama city board of education ordered each school to measure radiation at 8 points in street gutter, hedge and drain of rain water back in January.
In the radiation measurement of April, 20.4µSv/h was measured from a street gutter of a junior high school.
2012-05-06 German TV Interview on Fukushima: More and more people living in highly contaminated places are dying of heart disease because of cesium (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-06 When radioactive cesium enters body, 75% lodges in muscle tissue including heart, ENENews.com
2012-05-06 Mayor: “I’m losing my hair and have nosebleed everyday… I asked for blood test at a hospital in Tokyo because I’m exposed, but they refused it” (VIDEO), published: May 6th, 2012 at 7:47 pm ET, By ENENews
On April 25, YAMATANI Eriko, Member of the House of Councillors (National Diet of Japan) read an interview with Katsutaka Idogawa, mayor of Futaba [Editor's Note: See Wikipedia article "Futaba District, Fukushima"], translated by Fukushima Diary

[...] Japanese government submit SPEEDI data to US and concealed it from Japanese people. Even now, SPEEDI data is not given to Futaba town.
[...] We were not even informed of venting.
[...] I’m losing my hair and have nosebleed everyday. The other day, I asked for blood test at a hospital in Tokyo because I’m exposed but they refused it. We were even exposed and there is even no treatment, or proper inspection. Medical check up for Fukushima citizens are not detailed enough either.

2012-05-06 Official’s Testimony: “Our town citizens reported they tried to have exposure tests at several hospitals but they are all stopped by Fukushima Medical University” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 The Real Super Heroes, majiasblog.blogspot.com
I was dragged to the Avengers movie with my boys.
I kept thinking while watching the film that the REAL super heroes are the workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant who are sacrificing their lives to save Japan and the northern hemisphere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C03f_WEmiXY&feature=plcp
Many of them may have been tricked into working at the plant.
Media reports suggest they are not treated well.
Tragically, we don't know their names.
We don't have an opportunity to offer them our thanks.
We don't celebrate their efforts, nor mourn their deaths.
There is something very wrong here.
References
Hat tip for video link: Wideawake
Phred Dvorak “Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Workers Detail Lax Safety Practices at Plant,” The Wall Street Journal (2011, June 14): A1, A12.
Ilya Perlingieri “No Protection For Fukushima's 'Expendable' Citizens Or Us,” Jeff Rense (2011, May 4):
http://www.rense.com/general94/noprot.htm
"Whereabouts of 30 Nuclear Power Plant Subcontractors Unknown: Health Ministry" Mainichi (2011, June 21): http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110621p2a00m0na005000c.html.
“TEPCO Says It Has Lost Contact with 143 Nuclear Plant Workers,” Japan Today (2011, August 10): http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tepco-says-it-has-lost-contact-with-143-nuclear-plant-workers
2012-05-07 The Guardian asks: How likely is a catastrophe at Fukushima’s No. 4 fuel pool? Plant near fault as large as one that caused M9.0 quake, ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Shallow M4.8 hits Fukushima — 5km deep (MAPS), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Japan Physician: Radiation levels 40 times higher than reported by Japan gov’t — 12 Megabequerels per meter and NOT designated as evacuation zone (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Head of Medical Clinic: Radiation already causing health problems around Tokyo — Highly contaminated areas have led to physiological damage (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Kyoto Professor: 20,000 square kilometers would be evacuated if Japan followed law on “illegal” radioactive waste — 20 times larger than no-go zone (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Japan Nuclear Expert: There are known to be broken fuel rod assemblies in Spent Fuel Pool No. 4 — Large amount of radioactive material has fallen to bottom — “Many years” to get fuel out (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 stream the bugs out & crack the tepcode @ fukushima dai-ichi livestream (video) (YouTube) (8:17) Video-remastered and colorized version of TEPCO webcam views with soundtrack. YouTube caption: "syncro & dual layered video with my records from last night and the uploads from fukulong:", ENENews.com [h/t Monday, May 7, 2012, Watch Nuchelchen's Video Cracking the Tepco Code, majiasblog.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HspBjqUbeZM&feature=youtu.be]
2012-05-07 Bellona: Concerns loom ever larger at Fukushima as experts warn of No. 4 fuel pool’s unstable condition with increasing worry, ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Kyodo: More than 25 Koriyama schools with high radiation areas — At least 19 nursery and elementary schools affected — 60km from Fukushima Daiichi, ENENews.com
2012-05-08 Report Contains Numbers of Fuel Assemblies at Fukushima as of March 2010, majiasblog.blogspot.com
I'm collecting some data about how many fuel assemblies were at Fukushima
Tomorrow (Wed) I'll post my calculations about the Cesium-137 contained in those assemblies.
I was pleased today to find a report detailing how many assemblies were at the plant in 2010. This report may not be new, and I know other people have discussed it, but it has some valuable information that I can use for estimating how much radiation is at various places in the plant.
The report is titled Integrity Inspection of Dry Storage Casks and Spent Fuels at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. 16 November 2010. Yumiko Kumano, Tokyo Electric Power Company
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
The report states "Approximately 700 spent fuel assemblies are generated every year" (p. 9)
The assemblies are stored in spent fuel pools and also in dry casks. Each reactor building has a spent fuel pool and there is also a common spent fuel pool.
On page 9 there is a nice table detailing the amount of fuel assemblies in storage at the plant as of March 2010.
STORAGE METHOD STORAGE AMOUNT CAPACITY
Spent Fuel Pool at Each Reactor 3,450 assemblies in each pool 8,310
Dry Cask 408 assemblies 408
Common Spent Fuel Pool 6,291 6,840
____________________________________________________________________
Total 10,149 as of March 2010 15,558

There is also a chart for Storage Amount (ton-U) as of March 2010 (page 4)
Fukushima Daiichi had 1,760 (ton-U) as of March 2010
I found two other sources of information for spent fuel stored at Daiichi plant:
MacKenzie of New Scientist reported in March 2011 that “the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site, and an unknown amount has been damaged. The Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.”
Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl." (MacKenzie http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20285-fukushima-radioactive-fallout-nears-chernobyl-levels.html )
Eliot Marshall and Sara Reardon on 17 March 2011. How Much Fuel Is at Risk at Fukushima? Science Insider http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/how-much-fuel-is-at-risk-at-fukushima.html?rss=1
“The most damaged Daiichi reactor, number 3, contains about 90 tons of fuel, and the storage pool above reactor 4, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) Gregory Jaczko reported yesterday had lost its cooling water, contains 135 tons of spent fuel. The amount of fuel lost in the core melt at Three Mile Island in 1979 was about 30 tons; the Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986."
2012-05-09 Tokyo bay becoming a hot spot, Posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com on May 9th, 2012
Prof. Yamazaki from Kinki university analyzed the cesium in sea ground of Tokyo bay on 4/2/2012.
He found out it increased since last August.
The samples were taken at 3 locations in Tokyo bay, near Arakawa river Tokyo and Urayasu Chiba. [More Here]
2012-05-09 Asia-Pacific Journal: Surging suicide rate among Fukushima evacuees — “Figures have been fabricated to save face… officials press hard for cover-ups” -NGO leader, ENENews.com
2012-05-09 Top talk show discusses Prof. Koide’s statements about feeding Fukushima-contaminated food to supporters of nuclear power (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-09 Shocking Report: Rumors of stressed-out Fukushima nuclear workers attacking women, ENENews.com
2012-05-09 How Much Radiation Is At Issue: Cesium 137 in Spent Fuel Pool 4, majiasblog.blogspot.com
This is part II from yesterday's posts covering the amount of radiation at the Fukushima plant:
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/report-contains-numbers-of-fuel.html
In this post I am summarizing remarks made by Professor Hiroaki Koide at the May 4 Conference in New York City available at the webpage Cinema Forum Fukushima. I will use the data presented here for a third post.
Professor Hiroaki Koide, Nuclear Reactor Specialist and Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute also spoke at the conference.[i] Prof. Koide discussed the amount of radiation released in March of 2011 and discussed the status of the reactors at the plant. He stated that the Japanese government report submitted to the IAEA quantified the radiation released by the explosions of March 2011 at 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137 alone. This figure did not include other radionuclides, nor did it include cesium released of radionuclides into the ocean. Yet, it amounted to 170 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima explosion (Hiroshima was 89 terabecquerels of cesium-137).
Prof. Koide addressed the status of reactor 4 separately. He explained that the reactor core 4 contained 548 assemblies of nuclear rods. Those assemblies were not in the reactor core at the time of the earthquake but rather were in the reactor 4 spent fuel pool. There were therefore a total of 1331 fuel assemblies in pool 4. These fuel assemblies contain five thousand times the amount of cesium 137 released by the Hiroshima bomb. Prof. Koide went on to explain that three of the other reactors at the plant, reactors 1, 2, and 3, all had core meltdowns and the current locations of the melted coriums are unknown. He noted that significant releases of radiation contamination continue into the ocean. Prof. Koide concluded that humanity as a whole has never experienced this level of radiation contamination and he stated “I have no idea what will happen but we will be fighting this radiation on the order of tens, hundreds of years”
2012-05-09 Post 3: Unanswered Questions and Some Extrapolations Regarding Radiation at Fukushima, majiasblog.blogspot.com, Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Post 3: Unanswered Questions and Some Extrapolations Regarding Radiation at Fukushima
This is the third post in 3:
1. Post I: Report Contains Numbers of Fuel Assemblies at Fukushima as of March 2010
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/report-contains-numbers-of-fuel.html
2. Post II: How Much Radiation Is At Issue: Cesium 137 in Spent Fuel Pool 4
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-much-radiation-is-at-issue-cesium.html
My Analysis:
Strangely missing from most public dialogue about the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant are any specific discussions of (a) reactor 3; (b) the common spent fuel pool, and (c) reactors 5 and 6. Also missing from public discussion are (d) quantifications of other forms of radionuclides that were released into the air and sea during the explosion. Most importantly, perhaps, is (e) the absence of any kind of discussion of the ongoing nature of the releases. I'm going to address unit 3 and the common spent fuel pool here.
The exact state of reactor 3 is unknown but the physical appearance of the reactor is of utter destruction. Reactor 3 had the vigorous explosion and commentators have suggested that there was either a criticality in the reactor pressure vessel or in the spent fuel pool. Reactor 3 alone contained mox fuel, which uses plutonium in the fuel mix, rendering it more toxic than fuel based only on uranium (Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/25/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110325)
Using the data from the previous two posts linked above I am going to make some extrapolations about the cesium-137 radiation in spent fuel pool #3 and the common spent fuel pool.
What We Know About Cesium-137 in Fuel Pool 4
Professor Koide claimed the following: 1331 assemblies = 5000 X as much cesium-137 as released by Hiroshima (he said Hiroshima was 89 terabecquerels of cesium-137)
Cesium-137 in Common Spent Fuel Pool?
According to the report linked in post 1 (http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf), the common spent fuel pool had 6,291 assemblies in March of 2010. Accordingly, it must have approximately 4.7 X as much Cesium-137 as spent fuel pool #4.
Put otherwise, the common spent fuel pool must have over 23,000X as much cesium-137 as contained in the Hiroshima bomb. It must have 23,000X 89 terabecquerels worth of cesium-137.(?)
[Caution: these figures are really only general estimates and do not address the relative depletion of radiation in the spent fuel pools since they're based on Prof. Koide's estimation of the amount of radiation in fuel pool 4, which contained new fuel. So, the figures are useful, albeit only ballpark in nature.]
THERE HAS BEEN LITTLE-TO-NO MENTION OF THE STATUS OF THE COMMON SPENT FUEL POOL.
Now let us look at Spent Fuel Pool #3.
According to the report linked in post 1, each spent fuel pool at the reactor buildings contained 3,450 fuel assemblies. Hence, we can extrapolate that spent fuel pool #3 had 2.592X as much cesium as spent fuel pool 4 (1331 assemblies).
So, spent fuel pool #3 could possibly have had 12,960X as much cesium-137 as the Hiroshima bomb, or 1,153,440 terabecquerels of cesium-137. (?)
[Caution again--ballpark figures]
Ballpark numbers for cesium-137 are huge for spent fuel pool 3 (and that doesn't include the fuel in the reactor core).
There is evidence unit 3 spent fuel pool was damaged or possibly even destroyed:
First, Visual pictures of the plant suggest spent fuel pool 3 is no longer existent.
http://www.satimagingcorp.com/galleryimages/worldview-2-fukushima-daiichi-031711.jpg
Second, Unit 3 had the biggest explosion of units 1-3. We've seen the visual evidence in the video releases of the explosions.
Third, the NRC tapes indicate significant damage to unit 3.
Asahi Flyover: No spent fuel pool seen in Reactor No. 3 — SFP ‘must’ be in center of screen, however we can’t see any of it (VIDEO) (http://enenews.com/developing-asahi-flyover-spent-fuel-pool-reactor-3-sfp-be-center-screen-video ;Asahi video availble here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1Vq5TzMvRa4)
NRC minutes available here:
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A109.pdf
Fourth, on March 15 and 16 2011, Tepco and Japanese authorities described unit 3 as their priority:
Washington Post 3/15: [excerpt] "At the Fukushima plant, workers were focusing on the unit 3 reactor building, where a white plume of smoke was spotted Wednesday morning, and on unit 4, where fires flared up Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning... Wednesday afternoon, the Japanese military dispatched two helicopters to the Daiichi plant from Kasuminome Air Base in Sendai. A lead chopper was sent to determine whether radiation levels were low enough to continue with the operation. The second helicopter, a Boeing CH-47, followed behind, a huge bucket of sea water dangling beneath it. The CH-47 was slated to make several passes to drop water onto unit 3. But the crew on the first copter found radiation levels were too high to carry out the risky mission." [end excerpt]
" http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/latest-nuclear-plant-explosion-in-japan-raises-radiation-fears/2011/03/15/ABwTmha_story.html
"The plant operator described No. 3 -- the only reactor at that uses plutonium in its fuel mix -- as the "'priority.'"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110316/ts_nm/us_japan_quake
CONCLUSIONS
The evidence suggests unit 3 was severely damaged. However, we do not know with any certainty how damaged the pool was, nor the reactor core.
I plan on searching for more information about spent fuel pool 3 in my archives.
Finding any reports of the common spent fuel pools will be challenging.
However, the information we have about what was actually stored at the plant (!!!!) and the sheer volume of radionuclides in the fuel rods together make one wonder why unit 3 was dropped from the news when it was the priority in March 2011?
Also, why all the recent attention now to unit 4 and nothing on the other units despite the massive steam/smoke releases over the last few months, documented in the Tepco and JNN webcams trained on the plant?
BACKGROUND
Robert Alvarez wrote to author of website Akio Matsumura:
–Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity.
–About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP).
The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel). (cited at Akio Matsumura http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html)
NukeProfessional provides the following 2 analyses of uranium and plutonium emitted from the plant
http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/p/uranium-aerosolized-into-atmosphere.html
http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/2012/03/plutonium-admission-by-epa.html
Jim Stone calculates the radiation from the uranium and plutonium in unit 3. I am not familiar with him as a source, but the numbers seem reliable when considered in relation to the cesium-137 numbers http://www.degaray.com/misc/147-RealTime-JimStoneFreelance.html
2012-05-09 Alpha radiation detected near Japan’s west coast in Niigata, Yamagata — Local official suspects levels too high to be from Fukushima Daiichi (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-09 Krypton-85 doubles inside Reactor No. 2 — At highest level since year began, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 Minamisoma is 122 times more contaminated than mandatory evacuation zone in Belarus, fukushima-diary.com, Posted by Mochizuki on May 10th, 2012
Mr. Oyama, a Minamisoma city councilor measured cesium 134 / 137 of the soil of Minamisoma city.
Mr. Oyama, a Minamisoma city councilor measured cesium 134 / 137 of the soil of Minamisoma city.
[Japanese script]
The analysis was done by a laboratory of Minamisoma local government.
[Japanese script]
The result is like this graph below.
[Japanese script]
The most left “bar” is the doubled limit of mandatory evacuation zone in Belarus. (2*1,480,000Bq/m2). It was needed for the 2 reasons.
[Japanese script] (148[Japanese script]Bq/m2) [Japanese script]
1. Otherwise it is too small to recognize on this graph.
[[Japanese script]
2. Because the limit of 1,480,000Bq/m2 is only cesium137. By doubling the figure, it gets close to the total of cesium 137 and 134.
[script]
On 4/16/2012, Japanese government lifted hazard area of this zone.
[script]
2012-05-10 Major Japan Weekly: Industry insiders say Fukushima Daini “damaged badly”, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 Tepco: Reactor No. 3 has “doors that should not be disclosed for the issue of nuclear material protection” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-10 500,000 people to have been evacuated around Fukushima after March 11? Official suggested 50km evacuation zone -Asahi, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 Head of Tokyo-area Medical Clinic: “Risk from internal exposure is 200-600 times greater than risk from external exposure” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-10 SOS from Local Official: I can’t take it any more! “Black dust” over 5.5 million Bq/kg — They’re going to do what? Spring athletic meets? Swimming pool opening?, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 Fukushima woman poured gasoline over body and set self on fire — Family blames Tepco, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 Researcher: Japan accepting 20 millisieverts of radiation as safe “could lead to a public health disaster”, ENENews.com
2012-05-10 How they used to stock 100Bq/kg of radioactive waste posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 10th, 2012
Before 311, radioactive waste to contain over 100 Bq/kg of cesium was stocked like this on the picture.
Now 100Bq/kg is the safety limit of food.
2012-05-10 KPFK airs 15-minute segment on Spent Fuel Pool No. 4: “The scariest part? It’s being covered by virtually nobody in the mainstream corporate media” (AUDIO), ENENews.com
2012-05-11 No. 4 fuel pool will swing like upside down pendulum during quake — Suspended 100 feet in air (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-11 Former Ambassador: No. 4 reactor a top national security issue for entire world — Could start “the ultimate catastrophe”, ENENews.com
2012-05-11 Tepco on risk at Unit No. 4: Spent Fuel Pool can withstand up to a lower-6 intensity quake without collapsing, ENENews.com
2012-05-11 Japan Nuclear Expert: Humanity as a whole has literally never experienced something like Fukushima — “We will be fighting this radiation on the order of tens or hundreds of years” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-11 Reactor No. 3 at highest temperature of year — Now over 60ºC, ENENews.com
2012-05-11 Fukushima Daiichi: It May Be too Late Unless the Military Steps in by Akio Matsumura, May 11, 2012
The highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plants present a clear threat to the people of Japan and the world. Reactor 4 and the nearby common spent fuel pool contain over 11,000 highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies, many of which are exposed to the open air. The cesium-137, the radioactive component contained in these assemblies, present at the site is 85 times larger than the amount released during the Chernobyl accident. Another magnitude 7.0 earthquake would jar them from their pool or stop the cooling water, which would lead to a nuclear fire and meltdown. The nuclear disaster that would result is beyond anything science has ever seen. Calling it a global catastrophe is no exaggeration.
If political leaders understand the situation and the potential catastrophe, I find it difficult to understand why they remain silent.
The following leaves little to question:
Many scientists believe that it will be impossible to remove the 1,535 fuel assemblies in the pool of Reactor 4 within two or three years.
Japanese scientists give a greater than 90 percent probability that an earthquake of at least 7.0 magnitude will occur in the next three years in the close vicinity of Fukushia-Daiichi.
The crippled building of Reactor 4 will not stand through another strong earthquake.
Japan and the TEPCO do not have adequate nuclear technology and experience to handle a disaster of such proportions alone.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote a letter to Japan’s Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Ichiro Fujisaki, on April 16, 2012, discussing his fact-finding trip to the Fukushima Daiichi site.
Senator Wyden, senior member of the United States Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, mentioned that “the scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what [he] expected and the scope of the challenge to the utility owner, the government of Japan, and to the people of the region are daunting.” He also mentioned that “TEPCO’s December 21, 2011 remediation roadmap proposes to take up to ten years to complete spent fuel removal from all of the pools on the site. Given the compromised nature of these structures due to the events of March 11, their schedule carries extraordinary and continuing risk if further severe seismic events were to occur.”
Many of us echo Senator Wyden’s concerns...[more here]
2012-05-12 “Serious Implications”: Tokyo radiation an issue with IOC officials — Consultant said concerns were growing in Europe about possible contamination of Tokyo, ENENews.com
2012-05-12 Diplomat: Japan public “beginning to slow burn” and “becoming very indignant” — Gov’t “very fearful of opening any reactors” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-12 Nuclear Expert: Tokyo radiation data “terrifying” after Fukushima meltdowns — US knew city was in jeopardy since beginning and didn’t warn people (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-12 The highest atmospheric dose is in Tochigi (Apart from Fukushima),
Posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 12th, 2012
2012-05-12 [for this day] Tepco stopped releasing plant parameters in English, posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 13th, 2012
Tepco releases plant parameters data twice a day.
It is one of the most important source to know the latest state of the nuclear plants.
However, Tepco quit releasing the English version on 5/12/2012.
2012-05-12 Japanese bleeding from eyes posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 12th, 2012
Multiple Japanese people reported sudden bleeding from the eyes at once.
<Translate>
Bleeding from eyes. didn’t do anything, why ?! (From Ishinomaki city Miyagi = Disaster area.)
<End>
<Translate>
My eye started bleeding all of a sudden yesterday. It was my first time to get on an ambulance. They say the blood vessel of eyelid was cut. thought I was going to lose my eye sight. so scary. The reason is not known.(Tokyo)
<End>
2012-05-12 240,000 Bq/Kg at 5km from Imperial Palace, posted by Mochizuki, fukushima-diary.com, on May 15th, 2012
The extremely radioactive black substance was found at 4km from the center of Tokyo.
In 10 minutes walk from Hirai station of JR Sobu line, where is about 4 km from Tokyo station, 5 km from Imperial Palace
black substance was found in several places near the play ground of a public estates.
A local citizen’s group found this and had it analyzed by Prof. Yamauchi from Kobe university. He measured 243,000 Bq/Kg of cesium and the surface dose was 2µSv/h.
Mr. Ishikawa, the chairman of citizen’s group states, the black substance is now everywhere in Tokyo, and it moves by wind or rain.
Roughly estimating, the soil around the black substance is contaminated as 15,600,000 Bq/m2 (cesium134/137).
In Belarus, the place where is more contaminated than 1,480,000Bq/Kg (cesium137) was defined as mandatory evacuation area.
To double the Belarus standard to make it close to the total of cesium 134 and 137, it becomes 2,960,000Bq/m2.
The graph to compare Tokyo to the mandatory evacuation area in Tokyo is below, which shows the contamination situation around Hirai Station is worse than no-man’s zone of Belarus by 527%.

North America

2012-05-06 Caldicott: Fukushima radiation will be reaching you quite soon on US West Coast — I don’t think I’d be surfing (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-07 Rain Fallout Measured 6x Greater Than Background Radiation, posted May 7, 2012
We took a swipe off of a piece of sheet metal at 1:15 pm on 5/7/12; the light rain had stopped approximately 1 hour prior to the sample being taken. The sample returned a reading of six times greater than background radiation
2012-05-07 TV: “Could it really happen?” State of Washington testing CLAMS for Fukushima radiation — Salmon and steelhead also — Will continue “until public concern abates” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-08 Columbia Medical Professor: Inhaling just one radioactive hot particle can cause cancer (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-08 FBI Whistleblower Releases Unauthorized Memoir — “They have individuals on their payroll on almost every nuclear facility in the United States” (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-09 U.S. Senator sounds alarm about 'precarious' Fukushima situation, warns of imminent release of radiation by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is, as far as Senators go, an honorable guy. I don't agree with all his politics, but I actually used to live in his district in Oregon when he was a congressman (1981 - 1996), and I remember him standing out as someone who genuinely seemed to care about the People.
To my knowledge, Sen. Wyden is the only U.S. Senator who has actually visited the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility and warned the U.S. public about what he saw. And what did he see? A wrecked, half-collapsed building site littered with massive collections of nuclear fuel rods that now threaten the entire Northern hemisphere with a radiation apocalypse.
(http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.htm...)
When Wyden returned to the USA following the visit, he immediately issued an urgent warning, now reprinted on his website. In the watered-down language of political correctness, the warning is still quite strong. As his website says: (http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/after-tour-of-fukushi...)
Wyden's principal concern is the relocation of spent fuel rods currently being stored in unsound structures immediately adjacent to the ocean. He strongly urged the Ambassador to accept international help to prevent dangerous nuclear material from being released into the environment.
He then went on to say, in his own words: (emphasis added)
"The scope of damage to the plants and to the surrounding area was far beyond what I expected and the scope of the challenges to the utility owner, the government of Japan, and to the people of the region are daunting. The precarious status of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear units and the risk presented by the enormous inventory of radioactive materials and spent fuel in the event of further earthquake threats should be of concern to all and a focus of greater international support and assistance."
His website goes on to say something that should stun anyone who understands the threat of radioactive contamination of the environment:
"Wyden found that the facilities designed to house spent nuclear fuel and the reactors themselves were still in a state of disrepair and located in areas that would make them susceptible to further damage from future seismic events. The reactor buildings still contain large amounts of spent fuel -- making them a huge safety risk and the only protection from a future tsunami, Wyden observed, is a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock."
Did you catch that last part? The only protection from a tsunami is a "makeshift sea wall erected out of bags or rock."
And to think, the fate of the world now depends on us all just "lucking out" and crossing our fingers in the hope that no earthquake or tsunami takes place before they clean up the Fukushima facility mess.
Which brings up the question: What exactly is being done to clean up the Fukushima facility mess?
In a word, nothing.
Governments play pretend
Virtually nothing is happening. All the governments involved (Japan and USA, primarily) are playing a ridiculously stupid game of pretending there is no problem. The Japanese government, for its part, has decided that instead of admitted to a radiation problem, it's easier to just tell Japanese citizens they have a mental disorder if they're concerned about radiation (http://www.prisonplanet.com/fear-of-radiation-treated-as-psychiatric-...).
The U.S. government plays a similar mind game, raising the allowable levels of radiation exposure by thousands of times and then declaring Fukushima fallout to be suddenly safe! (http://www.naturalnews.com/031963_radiation_exposure.html)
Governments, in other words, are in denial mode even while Fukushima smolders and hurls us all toward irreversible global disaster.
If Fukushima were a "terrorist," the U.S. government would stop at nothing to defeat it
What's really telling in all this is that if a "terrorist" organization were threatening the USA with the same amount of nuclear material held at Fukushima, the U.S. would take immediate and decisive action to eliminate that threat. For the record, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility has enough radioactive material to make thousands of terrorist "dirty bombs".
All that radioactive material now threatens America, but because it is subjected to random "natural" causes (earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.) instead of "terrorist" causes, the U.S. government has stupidly chosen to ignore it. It's not politically advantageous to talk about Fukushima, you see, because it doesn't fit into the false theatrical narrative of terrorists threatening America.
This leaves us all in a frustratingly idiotic catch-22, where governments refuse to address a problem that threatens the world unless and until the problem explodes in their faces, at which point it is too late to address it.
All this leads to the obvious solution for resolving the Fukushima conundrum. The way to get governments to address Fukushima is to allow the facility to be taken over by terrorists! Only then will the U.S. government consider the threat to be real, since the entire government only sees things through "terrorist glasses."
The science of denial
Of course, the real source of all this terror is the arrogance of modern science itself, which now threatens the very survival of the human race. As I recently wrote here on NaturalNews, the human race is being "suicided" in the name of science. (http://www.naturalnews.com/035790_scientific_suicide_humans.html)
Science has become a far greater threat than terrorism could ever imagine, because in the name of "science," we have been placed in the crosshairs of not just a nuclear apocalypse, but also the disastrous effects of self-replicating genetic pollution via GMOs.
"Science" has handed us antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the global pollution of crops and soils with synthetic pesticides, the death of the honey bees, and the mass poisoning of children with mercury through dentistry and vaccines (among other crimes). "Science" told us that nuclear power was safe ... yet here we are in 2012, on the verge of an event that could kill a quarter of the human population on the planet, and all the scientists can do is deny any problem exists at all.
Denial may be an effective psychological tactic in politics and poker, but unfortunately for the rest of us it does not alter the laws of physics. "Denial" does not change the 30-year half life of Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope that mimics the mineral potassium and thus is easily absorbed into food crops, poisoning the entire food supply.
Denial is not a tactic of genuine leaders; it is a last-ditch desperate ploy of the weak-minded.
We are living in the land of denial, led by elected denialists who are voted into office by working-class denialists. Denial has become our modus operandi, our fabric of fairytales. It has allowed our civilization to ride high on a global debt pyramid and it will be the harbinger of our ultimate destruction at the hands of "scientists" who promised us life but delivered us unto death.

Europe and the Rest of the World

2012-05-06 Physician: There are homes in Chernobyl now with children so grossly deformed, we’ve never seen anything like it in the history of pediatrics — Cancer at 6 instead of 60, that’s what nuclear power means (VIDEO), ENENews.com
2012-05-08 Tokyo officials paying for bloggers to come to Japan and show it’s safe — First choice mentioned is editor of Muslim Brotherhood’s website — “Bloggers have direct channels to the audience, to whom established media do not necessarily appeal”, ENENews.com